In 2012, I attended, along with 600 other people, a 5-day personal development workshop in Rome.

The first day started late in the evening and finished at 03:00 in the morning. The deep night found us around a big fire outside the hotel burning a piece of paper we had written about our previous self. The self we had to leave behind. It was really tense as we had made a journey in our past discovering our sins, our abandoned ambitions, our buried desires to become somebody else.

In that sheet of paper we burnt, there were 3 questions. Who was the person we put blame on what is happening in our life, why we felt angry\sad about them, what was the situation(s) between us.

There had been a 5-hour ritual before we reached the point to throw our old sins in the fire. We started from our birth, how we were as kids and our first time in school. Our first teacher, our first lessons, our first failure, our first love, our first success, and our first kiss, our first rejection, and our graduation. And then our career, our family, struggles, jobs, rejections, decisions, stress, cheating, disappointments, dream stealers, tears, lies, death, birth, sadness, happiness, laughs, smiles, pain, pleasure, gifts, loneliness, in other words, our life until then passed in front of our eyes in an amazing atmosphere and with the help of the coach.

And at 03:00 am we wrote those things, we screamed our anger, a ‘no more’ scream, and we burnt that piece of paper in the huge fire in a symbolic act, we got rid of the past, we forgave everyone and forgave ourselves.

We went to sleep, most of us crying like babies. The next morning the sun was shining and we were ready to start the workshop that promised to build our new selves.

There are few days left before the end of 2018. Can you check your life until now? Can you accept the challenge to see yourself as it is and face your demons? Can you scream ‘no more’?

Do this and I promise you, the sun that will rise the next day will be brighter, warmer and different.